Anshel Pfeffer

On Monday night, the Knesset overwhelmingly voted to dissolve itself, putting paid to the theories of a last-minute, alternative coalition.

Elections on March 17, 2015 are now unavoidable, and the next few weeks will be focused on primaries, alliance-building and selecting candidates as each party scrambles to build a list it hopes will be attractive to the Israeli voters.

Two years ago, when the United States Senate held its confirmation hearings for President Barack Obama’s nomination for Secretary of Defence, a pitched battle ensued on Chuck Hagel’s suitability for the post, largely due to his previously critical statements on Israel and a perceived “softness” towards Iran.

Israel was set on the path to early elections this week after relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of the two centrist parties in his coalition, Yesh Atid and Hatnuah, collapsed amid a storm of recrimination.

The Palestinian Authority is planning to postpone its attempt to secure a UN timetable for the unilateral establishment of a Palestinian state.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told Ma'an news agency on Monday that the decision had been delayed due to the difficulty of reaching the necessary majority in the Security Council and American pressure.

Israel's political and security establishments are at loggerheads over the best way to confront the recent wave of terror attacks.

As ministers and right-wing politicians have called for more severe measures, the security chiefs have warned that "collective punishment" will not deter further attacks and only serve to further alienate the Palestinian population.

In the brief period in which Chuck Hagel served as the United States Secretary of Defence before being forced to resign this week he hardly left his mark on the Pentagon, America's armed services or the regions in which they operate.

Jerusalem is brimming with specially trained anti-terror police. But when a call came in at 7.01 am on Tuesday morning about a terror attack in a synagogue in the Har Nof neighbourhood, the first officers on the scene were a couple of traffic cops.

One of them, Zaidan Saif, was fatally wounded when he tried to confront the murderers, cousins Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal.

Israeli leaders remain deeply sceptical of US intentions on the eve of the deadline to reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear programme.

Despite repeated US assurances that Iran will not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon and reports that no progress was made in the round of talks this week, the current assessment in Jerusalem is that the Obama administration is determined to reach a deal at